GRIN Community is Obsessed with Centralization

And this is why I made the topic title what I did – and the obsession with centralization attracts the wrong users.

Attracting the wrong users to GRIN (edit: community) is the wrong thing to do.

Grin is meant for everyone. There aren’t any “wrong users.”

Sorry, I meant the GRIN community. There’s a big difference. There are “wrong users” for the GRIN community. If there weren’t, we’d have no CoC.

If you see nothing wrong with the centralized services and what they do, if you think the elite that silence people who disagree with them aren’t the wrong people, if you see nothing wrong with the centralized services’ ops and admins banning communities they disagree with, yeah I guess your right.

I see lots wrong with banning communities and free speech. It’s not something we’ve experienced in Grin, but we could. Thankfully, we have multiple communities to fall back on, and adding another, like Matrix, is good for the community. But I think getting rid of active communities would be a net loss.

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I personally believe that every platform has a potential unique purpose. I think it is good to be present more or less everywhere for one reason: there are users everywhere and not everyone will be willing to “convert” to a particular platform to discover ツ.

On the other hand, for those who are in, especially for a long time, it would be good to slowly transition to more decentralized platforms. I’m not saying there is an important reason to do so right now. Some things one should do just to stand up for own principles, which is why from now on you can also reach me on https://grincoin.chat as well!

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I can agree with this. I’m sorry if I espoused any hostility. I agree with you at this point. Apologies for the argumentatives. I was just trying to “rant & flame” and lost sight of the overall goal of our communities. That’s all from me – I can be reached @arthur@grincoin.chat if you want to join matrix.

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I think Telegram is a choice that blocks many users from joining a community. Mainly those who cannot or don’t want to provide their phone number, those who cannot or don’t want to accept the terms of service from Telegram FZ-LLC (analytics, data storage and processing, acceptable content) and also those who are banned by Telegram FZ-LLC or live in a country that bans Telegram. E2ee only on mobile, so arguably also those who cannot or don’t want to install the app. Telegram is not an open platform, just because there are many people left who are able to join.

If people use platforms like Tik Tok, Twitter and Facebook to promote Grin, I agree, more power to them, it helps the project. I created a Twitter account that I wanted to use for Grin and got instabanned, before I even wrote my first tweet…

I see the problem with using these platforms for “official” things like governance, and developer communication. These are integral parts of the project and the platform for these should be chosen wisely. Imagine if your government picked Facebook for official communication, announcements and filing of tax reports.
There is no point for a citizen who does not like Facebook to create an alternative government chanel in the fediverse and there is no point in creating an alternative governance chanel for Grin, if the Grin council members do not move there.

Governance on Keybase is the most severe in my opinion. It requires users to install software by Zoom (no webapp). There is no public backup of the chat log and It is not really easy to create one.

I am convinced that Zoom will pull the plug sooner or later for Keybase. I understand that at the time the community was created, the situation was different, but it has changed in the meantime. Telegram would not be a good replacement for the reasons that I listed above.

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Yep, I totally agree. Thankfully, we’ve got multiple to choose from (discord, keybase, and now matrix), with bridges between a few of them!

I think the bigger danger would be having “official” communication channels at all. We had our last-ever scheduled governance meeting last week, and dev communication occurs in a number of places (keybase, github, forum, etc.).

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As I understand, there are still councils that decide what to do with the fund and the repos. Kind of “official” to me, no matter how it is called.

As of Council evolution + clarification, they no longer meet over keybase. Decisions are made via the forum. The fund has always been managed by an unofficial group of contributors. There is nothing “official” about it.

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Forum is better than keybase, because it is openly accessible, as everything related to governance (official or unofficial) should be. :+1:

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I appreciate your enthusiasm for anti censorship platforms @dog . I’ll be on the matrix server if we get one.

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I’ve read the whole topic. I agree with @dog.
We need to use decentralized channels.
This will protect us from being banned in the future.
It saves from proofs about what is spoken.
It is more comfortable and more free.
It also suits the grin. Because we are the most decentralized, most independent project in cryptocurrencies and i think, our community is like this too.
Lastly, it also will make us different.

Therefore, we can promote a decentralized platform without closing existing channels in the first place. In time, once we’re all there, we can shut down other platforms.

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Some one has already created a account on Feb 20

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I fully agree with @dog here.
GRIN is about decentralization, in order for it to be coherent with it’s mission it must not rely on centralized services that require users to register with a phone number. Those are not welcoming to anonymous folks like Igno or Satoshi.
Discord can be replaced with rocket.chat.
Telegram can be replaced with XMPP, see this offering for a free hosting.

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Doing this you would basically close 3 communication-channels to have 1 in the future. How is this a “decentralized” move?

Instead of replacing the existing channels (which would further cut down the user-count) you could add the proposed communication-channels as additional channels that could be used by privacy-sensitive users. Over time, others might follow and these new groups could grow and become prevalent.

Lots of my friends switched lately from WhatsApp to Signal for good, without any pressure from peers, they were just pissed about facebook, all by themselves. It shows that people really might just leave behind plattforms that are not trustworthy. This could be utilized by creating Grin-Channels on such decentralized plattforms that could grow over time.

Also it might not be that of a good idea to have everybody in the same (decentralized) communication-channel:
I had the impression that in the past certain community-members (especially core-council folks) were verbally attacked by Users in the Telegram group. I also have the impression that the overall tone in Telegram is quite rougher than in Discord. So folks who don’t mind this stick with Telegram, the other ones who value a more cultivated tone stick with Discord.

If we have decentralized communication-channels like the proposed ones (rocket chat, XMPP etc.) there is a good chance that people who get annoyed by the development of Telegram / Discord switch to them over time. But i certainly would not start to tear down bridges to existing communication channels, i mean, its not like Grin has already millions of users and could just give a damn because there are so many of them.

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Because you are moving from a centralized service to a decentralized service. Open 3 matrix servers and/or add 1 XMPP. Put different people in charge. If everyone is following Grin’s CoC there’s no issue.

As far as the precious idle users in Telegram, Discord and Keybase, you’re right, I’m sure we definitely need them and that arbitrary number of users (not actual user engagement) make all the difference I’m sure :roll_eyes:

I left the discord server after getting the feeling that the matrix-discord bridge was not working intentionally (my paranoid schizophrenia kicked in) and after my messages started being deleted by a bot. I’ll be deleting my discord account in the next couple of hours and transfering the discord-server for slatepacks.com to my business partner.

Anyway - I’ve said my piece. Have fun on those centralized services!!

PS: Discord is SPYWARE: Discord — Spyware Watchdog

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b…but I wanna buy the bad no-no freedom things.

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The pendulum is swinging and will hit our community soon enough.
Telegram:

edit: this is with the APK / direct download from Telegram, this isn’t Google or Apple censoring it.